A different kind of peril in the time of SARS

by Beverly Biderman

Editor: Here's a real treat - an essay by Beverly Biderman about ... well, I'll let you decide what it's about.

This essay first appeared on The Globe and Mail's Facts&Arguments page. Beverly Biderman is the author of "Wired for Sound: A Journey into Hearing."

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Lip-reading should really be called face-reading. I need to see not just your lips, but the expression in your eyes, the way you wrinkle up your nose, your squint of sarcasm. 'Take off your sunglasses,' I tell my surprised companion. 'I can't hear you.'

By BEVERLY BIDERMAN

I have a recurring nightmare that has marred my sleep since childhood.

I am in a dark alley on a cold winter evening, and two men are approaching. They're walking with a swagger; they look tough. When they come closer I see their faces are covered by ski masks. One points his head in my direction and mumbles something. Bewildered, I say, "Pardon?" He mumbles again. I say "Pardon?" again. He shoots, and I wake up, terrified. Sitting up in bed, I mull over how, in real life, I'm going to tell a mugger that I'm deaf and lip-read before he shoots. I still haven't figured this one out.

A few years ago a report in a newspaper caught my eye. It began: "Rodney . . . is deaf, so he didn't hear a gunman order everyone at . . . [the] restaurant to stay on the floor for five minutes in spread-eagle position after a robbery . . ." Rodney must have had a strong constitution because he lived to tell his grandchildren about the beating he received.

More recently, I was horrified to read about a group of terrorists who hijacked an airplane and insisted that the passengers keep their heads down, and not look up at them. I imagine myself sitting in my seat, completely, utterly, confused. I raise my head when they speak, and (ever polite), say, "Pardon?" Who said that deafness wasn't life-threatening?

Now it seems that my old nightmare came true -- sort of -- but it's everyone, not just muggers I can't understand. I am surrounded by masked policemen, masked security guards, masked bank tellers, masked nurses and doctors. They have been (some still are) covering up their mouths with surgical masks to protect them from the potential of infection from SARS. Despite my new hearing with my cochlear implant, it is still a struggle for me to understand their muffled speech without seeing their lips.

At least my dental hygienist slips her green mask down from her face when she asks me to open my mouth wider or to stop biting her fingers.

What will happen, though, were she to become afraid that doing so might expose her to SARS or something else?

And what about the others: the security guard, the bank teller, the airline ticket agent who do not know of my need to read lips? Will I need to wear a sign around my neck, saying: "Lip-reader! Mask-wearers please communicate in writing."

Or will I have to start all my conversations with new people the way I now begin them with policemen who stop my car. After I roll down my window, I immediately blurt, "I'm deaf and lip-read!" I can't afford to have anyone with a gun suspicious about my inappropriate responses.

"Lady, do you know that this is a 60-kilometre-an-hour zone?"

"Thanks, officer, it's a new car."

Recently, my sister was quarantined because she works at a local hospital hit suddenly by SARS. She could only talk to me with a surgical mask covering her face. So, after I placed a care package on her front porch (red licorice, rippled potato chips, a video of Fantasia), I stood outside on her front lawn craning my neck back, while she leaned out her bedroom window, lamenting her loss of freedom like a grounded teenager.

Lip-reading should really be called face reading. I need to see not just your lips, but the expression in your eyes, the way you wrinkle up your nose, your squint of sarcasm. "Take off your sunglasses," I tell my surprised companion. "I can't hear you." Even people who have good hearing apparently face read. A "real-time captionist" (one of those people who caption the evening news on CBC for the deaf and hard-of-hearing) once told me that she made many more mistakes transcribing a person's speech if she couldn't see a face.

We all use facial cues to supplement what we hear. This is one of the reasons (aside from the missing tone of voice) why in e-mail, sarcasm can inflame, and people take offence where none is meant. Sitting in front of your computer in Vancouver, you cannot see the smile that was on your Toronto correspondent's face as she typed her message to you.

The next time there's fear of infection from something such as SARS, when people hide their faces behind masks, how will we see a warm smile of love, a melting look of sympathy? Will our communication with each other be stiffly mechanical, ungreased by the social lubrication of facial expressions? How will we connect emotionally? What will happen to the exuberant hug, the ungloved handshake? What will happen to the lip-readers among us?

Won't someone, please, make a transparent mask?

Beverly Biderman watches lips in Toronto.